Neighbors Helping Neighbors; Napa Quake Victims Get Light, Water Back

About 70,000 people affected by the Napa earthquake had their gas and electric restored by PG&E by 6 p.m. Monday. Many of those neighbors helped each other turn their gas meters off after the 6.1 magnitude quake.

“Some of these guys are going to neighbors that haven’t made appointments and taking care of them. So PG&E is doing a hell of a good job,” Dave Peck said.

Peck said the shaking was so strong, his bed slid 10 feet across the room. He spoke with FOX40 as he rolled a broken water heater out of his home on B Street and York near dowtown Napa. He said it exploded during the earthquake.

“It was so violent it slammed this around and broke the glass lining inside. Water was leaking out of the bottom,” said Peck.

But before Peck attended to his own gas emergency, he turned to helping his neighbors.

“It’s the Napa way,” said Peck.

“We all came outside just to get together. Dave came by with his little tool and shut off the gas for everyone, just as a precaution,” said Marsha Hartnack.

Hartnack and her husband Bob live across the street. They spoke to FOX40 while reinforcing some of their landscaping with wooden posts. They were surprised by how little damage the earthquake did to their craftsman home.

“I thought when we got out of bed there wouldn’t be a home left. The whole home would be leveled,” said Bob Hartnack.

“I thought we were going into the vortex of the earth. It was a wild ride. It was like a jackhammer, the waves going up and down,” Marsha Hartnack said.

On Jefferson Street, Jack Gobetti told FOX40 a big screen TV nearly killed his dog, Otis, when it fell on his kennel.

“Good thing the dog was sleeping with me that night,” Gobetti said.

Gobetti lives next door to a two story home that folded into its foundation. A sight made much more frightening, after Gobetti revealed he had recently worked on the plumbing underneath that house. Even then, he said, he knew the structure was not sturdy.

“Thank god it didn’t happen when I was in the crawl space because the crawl space doesn’t exist anymore,” said Gobetti.

Gobetti was another neighbor who went around with a wrench and shut gas and power off for neighbors in need. Even after the house next door collapsed, he knelt in front of the unstable wodden frame to address a gas leak.

“I heard a hissing noise. Smelled the gas very strong. The building fell on meter #2. I shut it down with a wrench and said a prayer to the gas gods,” said Gobetti.